


No One Has More to Live For

by blamelessfool



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Chapter 1: Colter (Red Dead Redemption 2), Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Injury, M/M, Mild Suicidal Ideation, No Spoilers, Pining, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:27:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24225829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blamelessfool/pseuds/blamelessfool
Summary: Arthur stares at him, a little in shock. What is it about the kid that makes him feel every possible emotion, heightened, and sometimes all at once? He wants to strangle him as much as he wants to pull him into a strong hug, wants to punch him and tell him he’s a goddamn fool as much as he wants to tell him he feels things for John he doesn’t feel for anyone else, and he doesn’t know what that means.
Relationships: John Marston/Arthur Morgan
Comments: 7
Kudos: 54





	No One Has More to Live For

**Author's Note:**

> Title/inspiration are from a line in a letter my great-great grandma wrote to my great grandma from a sanatorium, sick with the Spanish flu in 1918. She wrote, “…I have lots to live for and that does keep up my courage. No one has more to live for. If it were not, I just expect I would have been a deserter from the fight long ago.”

For not the first time, Arthur wonders what the boy must have done in a previous life to deserve to be nearly killed in as many cruel and unusual ways as John had.

They’d all experienced their fair share of injuries, sure; you’d be hard-pressed to find a man among them who wasn’t nursing a healing gunshot wound, a nick from a knife, or bruised knuckles leftover from a barroom brawl. Many of them had- on more than one occasion- looked death in the face and turned the other way, Arthur included. But attacked by wolves, left half-dead and stranded on a snowy mountain with the claw marks to prove it? It’s exactly the kind of outlandish, too-crazy-to-be-made-up tale that would only happen to John, the kind of thing Swanson says happens when God’s trying to tell you something.

He almost laughs to himself as he thinks it, making methodical cuts into the deer pelt at his feet. He has the sudden urge to tell John that he must be paying for his sins, to poke and prod at him until John’s giving it right back, equally likely to end in playful shoves as real insults and hurt feelings. He’d honestly take either at this point- anything to keep his mind off the biting chill and gnawing hunger.

But John was in no shape for verbal or physical jabs, barely able to get a few words out in his intermittent moments of consciousness as the infection took hold, or so Hosea had informed him. Arthur had mostly kept his distance after John’s rescue on the mountain, knows there’s no use in him sitting at his bedside. What John needs is knowledgeable hands treating his wounds, comforting words and handholding from those he cares about, and perhaps a prayer or two- none of which Arthur is experienced with or comfortable providing. Besides, he’s sure John would rather see Abigail, Dutch, Hosea, or pretty much anyone other than him in his brief moments of awareness. 

He looks up from cleaning his knife at the sound of footsteps behind him, expecting Pearson to check how the carcass was coming, or maybe Dutch with another half-crazed plot in mind. Instead it’s Miss Grimshaw who hurriedly makes her way into view, face flushed pink from the cold.

“Mister Morgan, glad to see someone putting food on the table,” she says with a pointed glance towards Micah and Bill, sitting near a fire passing a bottle.

“Sure,” he says simply. “We’ve all got our part to play.”

“We’d be lost without you, you know.” He lowers his eyes at that, uncomfortable with the praise and guessing where this conversation is headed. “And some of us quite literally owe their life to you, as much as I’m sure it’d pain them to admit it.”

He sighs deeply, knowing she’s referencing John without having said the name. She’d tried unsuccessfully to make Arthur visit him several times in the last few days, each time Arthur brushing her off with some excuse or another. So he stays silent, slowly wiping his blade.

“I know he’d love a visit from you,” she says gently.

He’s not entirely convinced of that and he’s sure the doubt is apparent on his face. Part of him is torn, wants to check in on John like he’s used to doing- glancing at John’s plate at mealtimes to make sure he’s gotten enough to eat, a quick “You alright, Marston?” whenever he walks by. But he tries to imagine if the roles were reversed, if he were in John’s place with one foot in this world and one in the next. Would he want John to see him like that? He has a hard time imagining it, dying in a bed like John might be now, can’t picture meeting his end in anything other than a violent death at the wrong end of an enemy gun. But if he thinks hard enough, he can put himself in John’s shoes, and John in his. Would John keep a careful distance between them? Or would he sit by his side, hold his hand and beg him to stay alive? He doesn’t know.

“Look, Miss Grimshaw, he doesn’t want-”

“Arthur, I know you boys are always bickering, but this is no time to worry about childhood grudges! He might be-” she glances around, making sure no one is within earshot, “on his _deathbed_ , and you don’t even have the decency to sit next to him for five minutes?”

He doesn’t know how to tell her about the first and only time he’d gone to see him, how sheet-white and gaunt John looked, how he paced in the back of the room with the sharp awareness there was nothing he could do to fix it. “Miss Grimshaw, I don’t mean this to sound insensitive, but if he’s dyin’, there ain’t nothin’ I can do about it. Me going in there ain’t gonna change a damn thing. Besides, last I saw him…” The sudden image of John in his head twists his stomach uncomfortably. “Well, he weren’t even awake enough to know I was there. Believe me, I’m far more useful out here than I am in there,” he finishes lowly, but deliberately keeping his voice steady.

She purses her lips at that, searches his face and looks away uneasily. “He’s been asking for you.”

He goes cold, almost drops his knife to the dirt. “What?”

She hesitates, choosing her words carefully. “I didn’t want to tell you. It feels like a breach of confidence somehow, sharing the words said by a man only half aware of himself. At first, I weren’t too sure, but I thought I heard him say ‘Arthur’ a few times in his sleep. Today I heard him clear as day. He said, ‘where’s Arthur?’”

He slowly lets out a breath he didn’t notice he was holding, doesn’t know what to say. Eventually he waves a dismissive hand. “Listen, John’s been through worse than this and came out the other side. The kid’s a cockroach. He’s gonna outlive us all.”

Miss Grimshaw doesn’t appreciate his weak attempt at humor. “Arthur,” she says sharply, like a warning, “If you don’t see him and he doesn’t make it, you know as well as I do you’d regret it for the rest of your days.”

 _Shit_. He knows she’s right, and there’s no counterargument he can make to her or to himself that would justify not visiting the kid, his feelings be damned. He may be a coward in some ways, but John is family, and Arthur can put aside his own reservations for the closest thing he has to a brother. He drags a hand across his face. “Alright, fine, I’ll go see him.”

She brightens a little, the smile not quite reaching her eyes. “You’re a good man, Arthur Morgan.”

He feels her eyes on his back, knows she’s watching him as he makes his way towards John’s room. He’s angry at John for putting himself in this situation and angry at himself for not being able to handle it better. Why does it feel like he’s headed towards the gallows? _Dead man walking,_ he’ll write later in his journal, with full knowledge it’s more dramatic than the situation calls for.

Holding his breath, he opens the door gently, throwing a half-hearted prayer to a God he doesn’t believe in for an empty room. He’s going to feel awkward enough without an audience to his emotional inadequacy. Whether he’s afraid others would overhear him saying too much or too little, be overly emotional or not enough, he’s not sure. But by luck (or more likely by Miss Grimshaw’s doing, he guesses) the hut is vacant save for John dozing in the corner, quilt pulled up over his chest. He’s very thin. Just the sight of him makes his heart ache dully.

He approaches the bed trying to keep his footsteps light as he can and takes in John’s black and blue face, the bandages, tinged a deep red, and eyes that are nearly swollen shut as he lowers himself in the chair. Arthur’s not sure what to do with himself. He’s never been good in these situations. He crosses his arms and uncrosses them. _It don’t matter, idiot, he ain’t even awake,_ he curses himself and his awkwardness.

The moments stretch on and Arthur relaxes, John showing no signs of awakening anytime soon. He still isn’t sure what he supposed to be doing. He thinks back to vague memories of his own mother brushing his hair out of his eyes as a child, or watching Hosea caressing Bessie’s cheek as she lay ill and slowly fading. He hesitates but goes on instinct, and curls a hand behind John’s neck as his thumb strokes the soft skin just under his jaw. He’s comforted by the rapid but steady _thump-thump_ of John’s heartbeat.

“Arthur?” John murmurs, turning his head towards the touch. Arthur startles and jerks his hand back. John’s eyes dart around the room, looking in Arthur’s direction but not seeing him.

“Yeah, Marston, I’m here.” The hand he’d pulled away is frozen midway in the air and he debates touching John again or setting it back in his lap. He settles for placing it on John’s forearm resting on the bed, figures that’s safe enough.

John’s eyes finally find his. “Arthur,” he exhales again. His breathes come quick and shallow.

“You’re alright, John,” he says, soothingly rubbing John’s arm, “you’re okay.” He curses himself again. Why does it sound like he’s talking to his horse and not someone he’s known half his life?

A minute passes by in silence and John’s eyes eventually flutter shut. Arthur removes his hand and takes that as his cue to leave. Abigail can take over from here. But as he stands, John’s eyes flash open again.

“Arthur!” he almost shouts, jarringly loud in the empty room.

Arthur puts a hand back on his arm and shushes him gently. “Still here, John.”

John covers Arthur’s hand with his own. “Don’t leave,” he says weakly.

Arthur swallows, his throat suddenly thick with emotion. “Okay, John. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Okay.” John seems satisfied enough with his answer and visibly relaxes as he closes his eyes once more.

Arthur stares at him, a little in shock. _Goddammit_. What is it about the kid that makes him feel every possible emotion, heightened, and sometimes all at once? He wants to strangle him as much as he wants to pull him into a strong hug, wants to punch him and tell him he’s a goddamn fool as much as he wants to tell him he feels things for John he doesn’t feel for anyone else, and he doesn’t know what that means. Wants to kiss him gently on the forehead, and maybe not-so gently on the mouth, if he’s being honest with himself. Can imagine perfectly John’s noise of surprise, like he’s imagined it a thousand times before. In his mind, John either kisses back fearlessly, like he does most things, or punches him square in the jaw, depending on the day.

As much as he normally doesn’t waste time debating ethics, untangling the web of twisted morality that is his thoughts and actions, he does realize it’s probably unbecoming in some way to fantasize about kissing someone who might be dying, especially when that person was raised as his brother and may or may not actually hate him. He knows that. So he carefully pushes those thoughts to the back of his mind to deal with another time.

John seems to have fallen back into a deep sleep, breaths evening out and not coming labored as they had been. He still looks like death. John’s a fighter, Arthur knows, steel-willed enough to survive out of pure stubbornness if he wanted, but he’s not sure if John’s commitment to living is there. John’s said himself he’s not afraid to die, and at times his recklessness dances the line between bravery and self-destruction. But this is different. _You better fucking pull through this,_ he thinks angrily at John. _You got too much to live for._

Arthur shifts in his chair, antsy; too much sitting and thinking about things he can’t change. He pulls out his journal, like he always does when his mind can’t settle and his hand need something to do. Part of him doesn’t want to draw John in his current state, not wanting to burn the image in his memory more than it already is, but he does anyway. He loses himself in John’s sleep-softened face, the wave of his hair against the sharp cut of his jaw, and for once in his goddamn life, tries not to think too much.

\---

John’s fever breaks with the return of spring. As snow fades away, so does the feeling of death and uncertainty in the air, the unspoken will-he-or-won’t-he undercurrent in every camp conversation now gone. It seems the kid will live to see another day. Arthur tells himself he knew that all along, was never worried about it, didn’t picture having to bury him or how quiet camp would be without him.

Arthur busies himself with camp chores more and more as John stays awake longer and can sit up further each day. There’s a never-ending parade of visitors to John’s hut, it seems, Abigail a near constant presence at his bedside. He lets them have their space, figures his role is out here, chopping firewood or feeding the horses. Yet he finds himself drawn back to John’s room at night like a moth to a flame, when the fires have all gone dark and he knows Abigail and Miss Grimshaw and the others have gone to sleep, and he lets his feet lead him to John’s room.

They sit mostly in silence after Arthur’s initial questions (“You’re still here, then? How many steps you take this mornin’? You see Jack today?”). It might have been uncomfortable without their normal banter filling the quiet, but Arthur finds he doesn’t have that itch to leave like he normally does when he runs out of things to say. John, too, has apparently grown tolerant to stillness, more introspective in his brush with death.

“You ever think you were dyin’, Morgan? I mean really dyin’?” he asks, breaking their comfortable silence. The question comes seemingly out of nowhere yet isn’t entirely unexpected.

“Sure, plenty of times. You’ve been there for half of ‘em. That time I caught an O’Driscoll’s bullet outside Annesburg, the time-”

“No, I mean,” he makes a noise of frustration. “You ever been _sick_? Laying there for weeks thinking you might not make it?”

He thinks back to a hazy memory of being a child, under four blankets but unable to stop shivering. “Once, when I was a kid. It was real bad. The doctor weren’t sure if I’d pull through.”

John nods, unsurprised. He knew the story. “What’d you think about? When you thought you were dyin’?”

“Don’t remember too much. I know I thought about my mom, how sad she’d be if I didn’t make it. But I guess I slept through most of it.”

“It weren’t like that, for me,” he says, voice uncharacteristically quiet, raspy from disuse. “I was asleep, sort of, but I could hear voices. I knew people were there but couldn’t move. It was like I was drowning, and sometimes my head would come above water and I could open my eyes just for a minute, and then I’d be pulled right back under.”

Arthur doesn’t speak at first, not sure if John will continue. They’re sitting close on top of the quilt, shoulder to shoulder, close enough to feel the heat radiating from under his union suit.

When John doesn’t offer anything more, Arthur nudges his shoulder. “And what’d you think about? When you were trying to keep your head above water?”

John lowers his voice to almost a whisper. He won’t meet Arthur’s eyes. “I thought about all important things in my life. Dutch and Hosea. Jack, Abigail. You.”

Arthur sucks in a breath, starring raptly at John as to not miss a single emotion that fleets across his face.

“Honestly, there were times I thought about just stayin’ under. It was easier, more comfortable. I thought everybody’d move on if I’m gone. Hell, they might’ve even been better off,” John says easily, a little too nonchalant for Arthur’s liking. “But then I thought about that time when I nearly got my head shot off in the mountains out west, or when you pulled me out of that river, and all those other times you saved my life. How angry you were at me for even putting myself in those spots, but you still rescued me every time. And I realized I owed it to you to keep fightin’.”

“You owe it to yourself, you crazy bastard,” he half-whispers angrily. He wants to shake him.

“I know that! I know it, I really do. I ain’t done living yet.” John shifts on the bed, turning his shoulders and angling his body towards him, and grabs one of his hands. “But what got me through it was knowing you were here, even when you weren’t saying nothin’. When you touched my face or whispered somethin’ to me. How much I wanted to sit up and yell at you or hug you or punch you or kiss you-” his voice picks up speed.

“John-”

“And I don’t care how it sounds or what anyone might think about it, but it was _you_ who got me through this. No one else and _nothin_ ’ else. Just you. And I just thought you should know.”

“John, you absolute, good-for-nothin’, idiotic fool,” he says, shaking his head, but the fondness in his voice and his that had started thumb rubbing circles on the back of John’s hand with him realizing undercut the intent of the words. He firms his jaw and forces himself to stop worrying about having precisely the right thing to say, like he obsesses over getting the lines just right in his drawings. He just says what he knows to be true. “You’re my whole world, you know that? My entire fuckin’ world is you.”

John sighs deeply, closes his eyes and leans against his shoulder like he can finally relax. He looks young, younger than Arthur can remember him looking in a long time, and exhausted.

Arthur allows it for a few minutes, longer than he probably should, stroking his hair. But eventually he helps lower John down on his side, knows he needs rest. “Go to sleep now, John.” He smooths out the blanket on his chest, and presses a light kiss to the side of his head.

John keeps his eyes closed but reaches out a hand for him. “Stay with me?”

“Always.”

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd. Forgive my errors.
> 
> Thank you for reading <3


End file.
